Arlington must have Republicans taking care of the drinking water, y’all.

Lets go back in time, just a few months, to December of 2020. Representative Ron Wright (R), infamous for complaining that there is no federal protection for the ever-persecuted white American male, is the U.S. Representative for the 6th Congressional District of Texas. He believes that the 2020 election was fraudulent and votes against certifying the election results on the day of the Capitol riot, January 6.

Not long after Rep. Wright made it back to Arlington, he tested positive for COVID. And died. He had spent the entire last year battling lung cancer and tweeting that businesses and schools should re-open because COVID-19 isn’t all that dangerous.

Moving forward, 23 people have filed to run for his seat. Texans will be voting in a special election May 1. One of the candidates, former wrestler and current carpetbagger Dan Rodimer, has already had himself gossiped about at the beauty salon for being a fool. Not to be outdone, let me introduce y’all to one of the ladies running for Wright’s seat.

Sery Kim is Korean. Last week, there was a forum for the GOP candidates where they could out-stupid each other to try and win the Republican votes. Kim decided to play the race-card.

On the subject of Chinese immigrants, “I don’t want them here at all,” Sery Kim said. “They steal our intellectual property, they give us coronavirus, they don’t hold themselves accountable.” She said the racist part out-loud. Trump voters love that.

“And quite frankly, I can say that because I’m Korean,” she added.

She has refused to apologize, saying it’s the big bad liberal media’s fault and that she “will not back down from speaking the truth.” She lost the endorsements of the two Korean Republican Representatives in the House: Young Kim and Michelle Steel.

In a political climate where you’ve got to be a giant jack-ass to get on the ballot, she just might have a shot.

As I was writing this, I saw some more political news out of Arlington. Governor Abbott has turned down the offer to throw out the first pitch at the Ranger’s game this week, citing Major League Baseball’s opposition to Georgia’s restrictive Voter ID law. I’d wager three jars of El Jefe’s South Texas Pucker Up & Slap Yo’ Knee Bread n’ Butter pickles that Abbott expects to be boo’d out of the stadium by Texans still pissed off about last month’s power grid failure. Besides, no one watches the Rangers anyway. Go ‘Stros!

Among the outrages committed by Trump during his 4 year infestation of the WH is the damage he did to the US’s global standing.  Not only did he turn against centuries-long alliances and quit global cooperation (the WHO, Paris Climate Accord, Iranian nuclear deal), he ceded global trade positions to China.  Oh, he talked tough and launched a disastrous trade war, but the real damage he did was allowing China to get a giant leg up on global trade, diplomacy, and even defense.   When Trump was boasting about his “America First” policy, other countries were moving into the vacuum and moving quickly.  After a smaller increase last year due to the pandemic, China announced today an increase in its defense budget of 6.8% as it modernizes and increases its military capabilities.  Xi Jinping, facing no real political opposition, has jumped into the void created by Trump’s bungling cementing not only China’s dominance, but also his own.

Xi saw Trump’s bungling as an opportunity for China, and he took it.  He let Trump think he did the “biggest deal ever”, when, in fact, he pantsed him in front of the entire world, and the only people who didn’t see it were MAGHats and Lindsey Graham.  His trade war and “deal” with China used his crack negotiating skills – he gave China everything it wanted.  The Brookings Institute put it best just before the 2020 election:

“Despite Trump’s claim that “trade wars are good, and easy to win,” the ultimate results of the phase one trade deal between China and the United States — and the trade war that preceded it — have significantly hurt the American economy without solving the underlying economic concerns that the trade war was meant to resolve. The effects of the trade war go beyond economics, though. Trump’s prioritization on the trade deal and de-prioritization of all other dimensions of the relationship produced a more permissive environment for China to advance its interests abroad and oppress its own people at home, secure in the knowledge that American responses would be muted by a president who was reluctant to risk losing the deal.”

Trump’s paper tiger presidency allowed bad actors like Iran, Russian, and China to actually do the opposite of what he boasted would happen.  These countries, without the vigilance of the allies lead by the US to hold them to account, increased their global dominance.  Russia has expanded its cyber operations targeting all global democracies, China stepped into the void to dominate Pacific trade, and Iran is once again expanding its nuclear capability.  Worse, our own allies have backed away from us, and Biden’s aggressive re-engagement has not calmed fears about who the US will elect in 2024 and simply return to Trumpism.  This problem is not going away any time soon, especially with a Senate that can’t even pass a bill that will provide some relief to our long haul misery caused by Trump’s incompetence that was magnified by politicians terrified of his violent supporters.  Remarkably, it seems that Trump’s greatest accomplishment was creating an environment in the US toxic enough to enable domestic terrorism to rise from the shadows out into the light of day for the entire world to witness.  Domestic terrorists espousing fascist ideology and violence doesn’t give our allies confidence in our long term viability and most certainly takes away our moral authority as the biggest proponent of democracy around the world.

The damage Trump did will be long lasting and far reaching.  Republicans, trying to protect their own hides, refuse to acknowledge the problem, and this problem can’t be fixed with more executive orders and the efforts of only one party.  I’m not hopeful.

As if he didn’t have anything better to do, Trump has started restricting Chinese press in it’s access and reporting in the US. In retaliation, China has expelled the NY Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.  So.  Here we are in the middle of a global pandemic where the press is THE most important outlet for information, so what does Trump do?  Start a pissing contest with the largest country in the world.  Jesus.

It’s finally happening.  Trump’s policy pronouncements, probably tweeted while sitting on the toilet, have veered wildly from free trading to isolationist protectionism; from pro gun control to capitulating to the demands of the NRA; from attacking private businesses and the Post Office to insulting television personalities and petty feuds.  He’s threatened everything from nuclear war to global trade war.  He’s promised to eliminate the deficit while piling on an additional $1.5 trillion with the stroke of a pen.  He regularly threatens to jail political opponents.  He’s unstable, morally unfit for office, and basically living life in the White House as the cheesy reality television star he is.  In short, United States global policy has taken on the characteristics of a washing machine load of soiled towels, on high spin banging from side to side, only to be stopped by a power failure to make it all come to a halt before it floods the floor with filth.

In all of this chaos, Trump’s behavior has now become normalized.  The behavior of this shitbag infesting the White House has numbed our population to the most outrageous, totally corrupt conduct by any public official in US history.  His public speaking style is that of the ramblings of a moron.  He holds no standards of behavior; he has no foundation; he rambles incoherently about critical issues of national security; he has no grounding in true belief.  He’s a wind vane spinning wildly in the political winds.  He tweets a foundational principle – and within hours, he reverses himself.  He went after Amazon, claiming it was cheating the Postal Service out of billions of dollars and not paying sales tax.  Trump’s attack temporarily tanked the stock 15% or about $100 billion in market value.  His ranting about a trade war with China cost the Dow Jones 3,000 points.

The response of normal people? Depression. Fear.  Foreboding. The response of Trumpists who are just as goofy as he is?  Euphoria at the prospect of the second coming of the Man in the Sky caused by global chaos.  The response of the markets and other global powers?  Whipsawed.  Only, something changed after the on again off again threat of trade wars and attacks on Amazon.  After a year and a half of random idiocy, reversals, threats and nonsense, the markets have learned to ignore him.  He’s roiled the markets with wildly divergent tweets, numbing the influential with idiotic ramblings.  Those who pull the levers commerce have now learned to disregard his bullshit.  The market has learned that his random and wildly divergent tweets really have no basis except to garner attention for himself.  There is no basis in policy, no foundation, no ideology.  Our national policy has the same characteristics of that of a chimpanzee banging on a laptop keyboard.  He tweets simply for self gratification and attention.  Business leaders have learned that a random tweet doth not make policy – only when an adult (what few are left) speaks do they listen.  Otherwise they ignore His Orangeness.

For the first time, with the possible exception of the depths of the Watergate scandal, our country has no one at the helm.  The key lesson that I’ve learned is that the Founders so ingeniously designed our form of government that it can actually operate to some level with no leadership in the White House.  Its resiliency is further demonstrated by a hopeless deadlocked Congress which is also providing no direction, no responsible leadership, or even any common sense.

How long can we go like this?  Who knows, but my real fear is that as more and more people learn to ignore the rantings of the lunatic in the White House, his anger at being ignored will drive him to more and more outrageous conduct that will hopefully one day awake the Congress from its coma.  And that won’t be pretty.

The New Yorker has published a depressing piece by Evan Osnos, about how Trump has stupidly ceded global leadership and how China has rushed in to fill the vacuum.  Trump can very likely become our version of Gorbachev, who, you will recall, oversaw the unraveling of the Soviet Union into a loose amalgamation of oligarchies and totalitarian states dominated by Russia.  From the very first moment of his term, Trump has set about unraveling our country’s generations-old leadership position in the world, and China has gladly Hoovered up every opportunity to exercise its new found world position.
One notable of example of this phenomenon was the World Trade Organization conference in Marakesh last October, convened to update international trade rules.  We’ll let Osnos tell this sorry tale:

“The Trump Administration, which has been critical of the W.T.O., sent an official who delivered a speech and departed early. ‘For two days of meetings, there were no Americans,’ a former U.S. official told me. ‘And the Chinese were going into every session and chortling about how they were now guarantors of the trading system.’”

Trump continually boasts about “Making America Great Again”, and “Putting America First.”  The problem is that he simply doesn’t understand what that means and has made idiotic decisions that has diminished our country, and creating opportunities for other countries, especially China and Russia to jump into the breach.  Exiting the TPP was stupid.  Now American beef comes second to other beef producing countries like Australia.  Withdrawing from the Paris climate accords has damaged our reputation and stature throughout the world.  China is also negotiating to create the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which will form a 16 country free trade zone.  The US is NOT one of the 16 countries.

The damage that Trump has inflicted and continues to inflict will be multi-generational.  Some of the damage may never be repaired.  The US’s unilateral surrender of its prominent position as world leader has emboldened other countries to take over that prominence.  Protectionism and isolation never works, especially in the new, interconnected global market.

We all know the story about Cheeto Jesus provoking the Chinese (just for the hell of it) by breaking 40 years of diplomatic status quo by speaking directly with the president of Taiwan.  Yesterday, on Fox News Sunday, he doubled down saying,

I fully understand the ‘one China’ policy, but I don’t know why we have to be bound by a ‘one China’ policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.

China has said that the One China policy is “bedrock”.  Oh, and there’s this – China, for the first time in 18 months, flew one of their nuclear capable bombers over disputed waters in the South China Sea to warn CJ that they’re serious.

In the meantime, CJ says he doesn’t need a daily intelligence briefing.  God help us.